Monday, February 21, 2011

Ella Fitzgerald

Just don't give up trying to do what you really want to do. Where there is love and inspiration, I don't think you can ever go wrong.

John Ruskin

The highest reward for a person's work is not what they get for it, but what they become by it.

Dennis Wholey

When we don't enjoy what we do, we only nick the surface of our potential.

Ram Dass

Don't compare your path with anyone else's. Your path is unique to you. Whatever path you take, it's God calling you.

~

We're sitting under the tree of our thinking minds, wondering why we're not getting any sunshine!

~

Who you think you are will always be frightened of change. But it doesn't make any difference to who you truly are.

Sunday, February 20, 2011

Frances Hodgson Burnett

Much more surprising things can happen to anyone who, when a disagreeable or discouraged thought comes into his mind, just has the sense to remember in time and push it out by putting in an agreeable, determinedly courageous one. Two things cannot be in one place. --Where you tend a rose, my lad, A thistle cannot grow.

from The Secret Garden (1911)

 One of the few things people began to find out in the last century was that thoughts --just mere thoughts-- are as powerful as batteries-- as good for one as sunlight is, or as bad for one as poison. To let a sad thought or a bad one get into your mind is as dangerous as letting a scarlet fever germ get into your body. . . .So long as Mistress Mary's mind was full of disagreeable thoughts about her dislikes and sour opinions of people and her determination not to be pleased by or interested in anything, she was a yellow-faced, sickly, bored, and wretched child. . . .When new, beautiful thoughts began to push out the old, hideous ones, life began to come back to her, her blood ran healthily through her veins, and strength poured into her like a flood. Much more surprising things can happen to anyone who, when a disagreeable or discouraged thought comes into his mind, just has the sense to remember in time and push it out by putting in an agreeable, determinedly courageous one. --(i)Where you tend a rose, my lad, A thistle cannot grow.

Friday, February 18, 2011

Julia Child

Life itself is the proper binge. 

Thursday, February 17, 2011

David Kirkpatrick and David Sanger

They fused their secular expertise in social networks with a discipline culled from religious movements and combined the energy of soccer fans with the sophistication of surgeons and psychiatrists. Breaking free from older veterans of the Arab political opposition, they relied on tactics of nonviolent resistance channeled from an American scholar through a Serbian youth brigade - but also on marketing tactics borrowed from Silicon Valley.

from A Tunisian-Egyptian Link That Shook Arab History: Two-Year Collaboration of Dissidents Was a Key to the Democracy Movement published in The New York Times on Monday, February 14, 2011

Sunday, February 13, 2011

Sue Gray

We never thought we'd be camping between jumbo pickup trucks at a bayou bar in Louisiana. But this too, is America.

Wednesday, February 9, 2011

Dalai Lama

While the mind is untamed it can only cause trouble. If anger, greed or arrogance spring up they will take over the situation.

via Twitter

Tuesday, February 8, 2011

Louis Nizer

A man who uses his hands is a laborer.
One who uses his hands and his mind is a craftsman.
He who uses his hands and his mind and his heart is an artist.

Nicole is Better

I'm tired of all of the comparisons, and I'm tired of giving myself such a hard time over such insignificant things. So how's this for a new rule: you're allowed to do whatever you want, but only if you don't carry it with you after you're done. You can eat Nutella for lunch, but once you're done eating it, be done eating it. It's almost never the actual thing that's the problem, it's how we continue to be weighed down by the thing, even long after it's over. That's when we go comparison shopping for other people's lives. That's when we're Mean Girl bitches to ourselves. That's when we conveniently forget that if anyone else ever talked to us the way that we talk to ourselves, we'd dropkick them, no question.

So get your dropkick on. Live your fucking life. Leave everyone else's lives out of it. Make more good choices than not good choices. Let go of the not good choices. Eat Nutella. Repeat.

[Italics mine. --Ed.]

Blog post, 2/7/2011, NicoleIsBetter.com

Sunday, February 6, 2011

Aaron Sorkin

I have a big problem with people who glamorize dumbness and demonize education and intellect.

Ronald Reagan

I know in my heart that man is good, that what is right will always eventually triumph, and there is purpose and worth to each and every life.